Heritage Hills Living & Rehabilitation Center

Even though this facility's overall score was not a highlight, it actually earned a very good score in long-term care. In fact, we gave it a grade of B for that area, which is one of our better scores. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility was awarded its second best category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area, which is a decent grade. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. When calculating our nursing scores, we weigh both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

Moving on our final category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. When a facility has this bad of an inspection grade, you should expect some severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This particular nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they posed a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, we also need to point out that this place was assessed large government fines in excess of $50,000. This generally means that CMS inspectors became fed up after several years of failed government inspections.